Each year when the first day of school rolls around, I seem to forget what I did the last year. It’s like I black out the chaos of the beginning of the school year. Anyone else? This year, I am posting all about the first day of first grade for all of us to remember 🤪
This past year to try to avoid the black out that tends to come with the beginning of the year, I made minute by minute plans for the entire first week of school so that I could reference back to them. This was the best decision I made because it made planning for this year a breeze. Buckle up, this is a long post!
I want to preface this schedule by saying, I follow my normal schedule as closely as I can the first week but I supplement the activities. For example, I will still do “reading” at my scheduled reading time but it may be a classroom tour instead of a graphic organizer. This help students learn our routine and it helps get me into my teaching groove. It also helps me work out timing kinks before diving into content.
Arrival
As students arrive, they get to choose a breakfast if they need it and it comes to the classroom. I greet students at the door and explain to them to take everything (backpack, lunch, jacket, etc) into the classroom. If they have breakfast, I instruct them to eat their breakfast at their seat. If they do not have breakfast, they can work on the color pages at their table and enjoy a read aloud playing on the board. I like having a read aloud video going to the classroom stays calm, quiet and students at their seats. I do not want students arriving to chaos because 1. That is not our normal but 2. The first day is already overwhelming for most first graders. Before jumping into morning meeting, I call students one by one to take a First Day of First Grade photo, I use this in our end of the memory books & parents love them. We do a class photo as well.
Morning Meeting
On the first day, we will do a name/get to know you activity and then I will go over the need to knows. My need to knows include how to tell me you need to go to the bathroom, our schedule, how we get water, filling water bottles, saying “I agree,” participating in conversation, asking questions and voice level expectations. Everything else, I teach naturally as we take care of that topic or in First Grade Bootcamp (more on that later).
I try to cover the need to knows quickly because on the first day my main focus for morning meeting is teaching and practicing our morning routine so we can start it up tomorrow. At this time, we practice our morning routine by putting away their backpacks/lunch that I had them carry into the classroom before. Other things we go over is breakfast (getting it, eating it, cleaning it), signing in for attendance, and then morning choice procedures. We practice this entire routine 2-3 times and I explain that tomorrow morning when they came in we will start this routine.
Class Bathroom Break
After morning meeting each morning we take a class bathroom break and fill up water bottles for the morning. Since I have already been talking at them lots, we go over our bathroom break procedures in the hallway at the bathroom to change it up. We start by going over line up expectations, practicing and then lining up. Once we make it to the hallway, I talk while physically showing them our procedure making it a bit more interactive. Then, to start the bathroom break for real, I look for leaders who can show us what they just learned about our procedures.
Writing
Next in our typical schedule is writing. Like I said, I follow my schedule but just swap activities. For writing, we read a first day of first grade read aloud and complete an activity. Last year in my plans, we read “Schools First Day of School” and did this pencil feelings activity. I love this activity because it is a simple one but also gives me a good idea of their writing abilities. Before starting the activity portion, I introduce pencils and crayons going over our expectations. I precut the pencils so that I don’t need to worry about introducing scissors quite yet.
Recess
After writing is our morning recess, I stop with about 10-15 minutes before recess to talk about playground expectations. My school is a PBS school so we complete a PBS matrix anchor chart to talk about our expectations. I love reading the classic, Recess Queen with our expectation discussion. There are good read alouds on YouTube. These are great to give you a break! My favorite is below.
Reading & Reading Centers
Next up, is the longest chunk of our morning. It is whole group reading and reading centers. This is an hour and a half chunk in our classroom before lunch. Once centers are up and going this time flies, but the first week of school not so much. On the first day of school our principal schedules a time for us to go to eh cafe before our lunch time to talk about expectations and practice. So on day 1, when we return from recess we start with a PBS cafe matrix anchor chart then we head to the cafe to practice. After that I like to give a brain break after learning so many expectations already this morning. I will either get out morning choice tubs, more coloring, or a read aloud.
After lunch practice and a brain break, I sneak in one last first day of school activity before lunch. I like to do a classroom tour to start getting them familiar with our space. For this, we start by walking around the room together and I point out important things or build hype around things. Afterwards, I have a worksheet that students do by finding important things on their own and drawing or writing where they are. I introduce clipboards at this point because these are a large part of our classroom as well as working around the room. You could just have students do this activity at their desk too.
Lunch & Recess
Phew, we are officially halfway through the first day of first grade…
Similar to before recess we finish up with about 10-15 minutes before lunch to review expectations. We have already practiced lunch time so this is really just a review. We review our PBS matrix for lunch and recess, take our bathroom break/wash hands and head to the cafe.
Our recess is directly after lunch which is why we review recess beforehand too.
Read Aloud
When we come back inside after lunch and recess, this will be our daily read aloud time. I like to start this one day 1 because not only is it part of our normal schedule but it’s a great calm down time. We start by going over expectations for this time. Then on day 1, I give a little book preview of the first chapter books we will vote on on the second day of school. After that, I read 1-2 chapters of our read aloud each day depending on how long the chapters are.
I usually start the year by voting on: Magic Tree House Dinosaurs Before Dark (book 1), Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds and Junie B Jones and the Stupid, Smelly Bus
For our previews sometimes I show series preview videos, or I give the series preview showing other books and discussing how we could read multiple. I always do a picture walk & talk through some of the plot. After that, we vote on which book we would like to start.
Math
Our final chunk of the day is math. This chunk is around an hour and 15 minutes. It grows to about an hour and 30 minutes once we get good at packing up. During our math time, we do another activity. The first week of school, I do First Grade Boot Camp during math. Boot camp is designed to be a fun but effective way to review, practice, and master our classroom expectations. Students work to earn all of their badges throughout the week. I plan the afternoon to match expectations we have already worked on. So for this first day, we would do pencil and crayon bootcamp. For this, they “prove” they have mastered using pencils and crayons appropriately through a few activities. After they complete the activities, they earn their badge. They get to color their badge and add it to their bootcamp hat or vest.
Pack Up
After math, we have specials and after specials we start dismissal immediately so this means we pack up before heading to specials. Again, we end math earlier than I usually would to start talking about packing up. We create another PBS matrix (these are a big deal our first week if you can’t tell) and then we practice packing up by actually doing it. I will talk them through the routine these first few days and take notes of anything we need to practice the next day. With this being such a time crunch we don’t have time to practice and practice again each day.
Specials
Ah, planning time, finally. During planning this first day I double and triple check how each student gets home, check in on Remind Messaging and really just make sure my ducks are in a row. If I’m lucky I will start my specials routine by getting us ready for tomorrow but this usually doesn’t happen the first few days.
Dismissal
WE MADE IT! For dismissal on the first day of school, I have a clipboard with everyone’s way home and each student has a backpack tag saying how they get home. I have found this very helpful in first grade so if they get lost another staff member can quickly peek at where they need to go. This is also great for the students who did not do Kinder at our school.
That’s a Wrap on the First Day of First Grade!
I hope this DETAILED First Day of First Grade schedule helped you refresh your back to school mind or gave you some ideas for the first day of first grade!
